Katherine Heiny on the Inspiration for Her Latest Novel, Early Morning Riser

This novel started in the same way all my writing starts: with me bouncing story ideas off my husband and him suggesting various plots and me telling him that they will never work. And then after thinking about it for a few days, I change my mind and decide he was completely right and, in fact, a genius. (He is remarkably patient with this process.)

My original story idea was about a brother and sister who hire someone to get in a minor car accident with their mother (they want her to stop driving) and the man they hire is the local lothario, Duncan. That story didn’t work, but I liked Duncan so I kept him and started over with Jane. Once I started writing, I wanted to see how Jane’s real-life would differ from the life she planned, and who would remain in it. The car accident stayed in (at my husband’s suggestion) although in a very different form.

I grew up in Michigan and vacationed in Boyne City as a child, and then about 20 years ago, we bought a summer house there. I knew I wanted to set the novel in Boyne City, and that I wanted it to include lots of sunsets and my favourite beaches and parks and Kilwins (I really like ice cream) and lots of dinner-parties-gone wrong, which is my absolute favourite thing to write about. But I didn’t know in the beginning that it would also include my love of thrift stores, or the time my younger son had a meltdown on the local news, or the time I had to bribe him back into the car with marshmallows, or the worst-ever field trip I ever went on as a parent-chaperone. Those stories found their way into the novel and now they belong to Jane.

I chose teaching second grade as Jane’s occupation because my son’s second-grade teacher told me that once on Pajama Day, the DEA had raided her house by mistake (they got the address wrong) and she and her husband, also a teacher, had to go home and deal with the DEA while wearing their pajamas. That joke opens the book and everything else pretty much flowed from there.

We sold our Boyne City house last year—the movers were packing up around me as I wrote the last pages – and it was hard to say goodbye. It will forever be one of my favourite places and I like to think that Jane is still there.

Katherine Heiny